Democracy Now! coverage related to the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, that led to the overthrow of President Salvador Allende and brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. His regime murdered and tortured thousands during his repressive 17-year rule.

As we continue our look at the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile and the ongoing efforts by the loved ones of its victims to seek justice, we turn to the case of Charles Horman. A 31-year-old American journalist and filmmaker, Horman was in Chile during the coup and wrote about U.S. involvement in overthrowing the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Shortly after, he was abducted by Chilean soldiers and...

With the killings of at least 42 Muslim Brotherhood protesters today in Cairo, Egypt’s reconciliation effort following last week’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi remains fraught with violence. We host a discussion on what caused Morsi’s overthrow and what comes next for Egypt with three guests: Michael Wahid Hanna, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation; Shadi Hamid, director of research for the Brookings Doha Center...

Known as "Africa’s Pinochet," the former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, has been detained in Senegal. Habré is expected to face charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes for systematic torture and the killings of tens of thousands of opponents during his eight years in power in the 1980s. If the case proceeds, he will eventually stand trial in a special court established in Senegal after a 22-year campaign led by his...

One of Latin America’s most acclaimed writers, Eduardo Galeano is out with the new book, "Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History." Galeano’s classic "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" made headlines when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave President Obama a copy at the Summit of the Americas in 2009. Since its publication in 1971, "Open Veins" has...

The best-selling Chilean novelist Isabel Allende is out with a new book, "Maya’s Notebook: A Novel." It tells the story of a teenager named Maya Vidal and her struggles with drug addiction, grief and history. Although a work of fiction, the story is rooted in real-life tragedy. Three of Allende’s stepchildren have struggled with addiction: Two of them have died of drug-related causes, one in 1994 and the other just a...

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died at the age of 87. Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving three terms in office. Known as the "Iron Lady," Thatcher became synonymous with austerity economics as a close ally of President Ronald Reagan. She famously declared to critics of neoliberal capitalism that "there is no alternative." Her long-running battle with striking British...

We continue our conversation with acclaimed author Arundhati Roy by discussing the overlooked conflict in Kashmir, the center of a decades-long dispute between India and Pakistan. Roy joins us along with Sanjay Kak, a New Delhi-based documentary filmmaker whose most recent film is "Jashn-e-Azadi," or "How We Celebrate Freedom," and who is the author of the book, "Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in...

A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and '80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as "Operation Condor" involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists,...

Today we look at the Chilean students’ movement, which led last year’s massive citizen democracy movement — the largest protests since the days of opposition marches to General Augusto Pinochet a generation ago. For more than a year, the movement has rallied hundreds of thousands in the streets of Santiago and other major cities to demand greater access to affordable university education, as well as deeper structural changes...

Britain is refusing to give Julian Assange of WikiLeaks safe passage out of the country even though Ecuador has granted him political asylum. On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Assange would be arrested if he left the embassy. Britain has also threatened to raid the embassy in order to arrest Assange. "Under British law we can give them a week’s notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no...